Accessibility is not for a group of disabled people

It's often presented like that, right? We don't make things accessible for ourselves. There is this group of people we would like to help. We remove barriers for the people with disabilities!

I say this all with a bit of sarcasm.

Yes. 1 in 4 adults have a disability. The European Council shares this number.

And "More than 1 in 4 adults (28.7 percent) in the United States have some type of disability" says the CDC.

And if you have glasses, you're a person with a disability.

You have reading glasses? That's a disability as well.

Your screen is hard to read because of harsh sunlight? Don't worry. Good contrasts can counter this situational disability.

You can't listen to your podcast on the train? Thank goodness there's a transcript as well!

Sometimes a text is just too small. Doesn't matter. Your iPhone, your browser... zooming in is easy these days. You can even turn enlargement on by default.

How about unstructured information? No headings or nice lists in text. Or consistent navigation or naming of pages. Websites can be a confusing pain. Sometimes we can push through, and work our way through unpleasant platforms. Other times (a bad night? a noisy environment?) we just can't push through and say "forget about it".

There is no "1 in 4"-target group. The vast majority of people benefits from well-designed experiences.

Because that's what accessibility is. It's about well-designed experiences. Remove barriers for some and benefit a majority.

And you're probably in that majority. As well as your customers, colleagues and most people around you.

And maybe today they're not, but tomorrow they are.

There is only one very small minority in accessibility: the people who aren't impacted

More numbers and info about disability can be found in the Accessibility Fundamentals at inklusivo.